Developing Native Mobile Application using Agile Methodology
Native Mobile Application Vs Hybrid Mobile Application
Nowadays, there are several ways to develop mobile applications and a wide variety of tools and platforms, for both native or hybrid approach, each one taking some advantages and disadvantages. The correct technical analysis and choice are important to achieve the success in the market of mobile applications. Besides that, using an agile development methodology to develop the mobile applications will provide you the best and efficient way to release faster and high-quality applications in an iterative and incremental process, that will help you to fit the customer needs.
There are some advantages to developing a Native Mobile Application instead of a Hybrid Mobile Application, but the decision must take into account some important variables, as you can see in this article.
Below you can see some examples of these advantages and disadvantages, according to some requirements.
| Requirement | Details | Recommended Solution |
| The use of native features in Mobile Application | If the mobile application will need to use a lot of native features, it would be better to develop a native application. | Native Application |
| Short time to deliver the application to the market | If you need to deliver the application faster, for multiple platforms and the application does not need to use a lot of native features, the best decision is to develop a hybrid mobile application. | Hybrid Application |
| High frequency delivering the mobile application | If you need to deliver the application frequently, then it would be better to develop a hybrid mobile application. | Hybrid Application |
| The best user experience | If you plan to have the best user experience, the native application is typically more appropriate than hybrid application, due to the possibility of taking full advantage of all the features of the device. | Native Application |
| The best response time / average performance | The response time in the native mobile application is usually faster than hybrid mobile application. | Native Application |
Recommended Solution
It could be listed other requirements and reasons to develop a mobile application using native or hybrid approach, but the most important thing, in this case, is to properly analyze the software requirements and the technical limitations to decide which approach to use.
In this article, we will focus on the Native Mobile Application, but some concepts and development methodologies could be applied to both development approaches, independent of tools and platforms.
Gathering Effective Requirements for Mobile Applications
To define mobile application requirements, we first need to determine the hardware and operation system the application will run, because there is a wide range of devices and platforms in the market, and we need to decide in which one the application will need to run. This decision is important because it could affect the development skills required for the development team and the tools that will need to be used to develop the application. But thinking about the application features, it is important to know the target audience for the mobile application.
Remember that a mobile application should provide great value for a group of people and it is important to take a time to define the application target audience, the functional requirements, features and the nonfunctional requirements. This action will avoid the waste of time and money too late in the project.
By defining the target audience and the customer needs it will become possible to plan the correct features of the mobile application and write good software requirements and user stories.
It is strongly recommended that you create the mobile application requirements using the concept of user stories in a simple way. Avoiding heavy and large software requirement documents that will never be read by the customer and will become obsolete in a short period of time. The process of creating user stories, defining the application features, fits well with the adoption of an agile development methodology and the development of mobile application. Scrum is an efficient agile development framework that could be used for this kind of project.
The user story describes who will use the application feature and what will be done. In addition, we need to know why every concrete feature is important. The user stories are the starting point of the application development and it will be refined in each development iteration until be completed, providing the desired business value for the customer.
Using Agile Methodology to Develop Mobile Applications
Mobile application development is a dynamic process that fits well with an Agile Development Methodology. The Scrum is a famous iterative and incremental agile framework that enables the development team to deliver quickly. Furthermore, the Scrum framework enables the team to adapt the scope changes of application features, without causing major impacts on the project.
If we compare the Scrum to Waterfall process, Scrum enables the customer the necessary flexibility to understand their own needs regarding the mobile application features. Early and incremental deliveries of features will give to the customer the possibility to give us the feedback of the software.
The scope changes or refinement of user stories could be accommodated in subsequent development iterations. The great advantage using an agile methodology is that the customer visualizes the software features in advance, giving the possibility of achieving the objectives of the project in a more dynamic and fast way.
It is recommended, especially for mobile application development, that iterations be shorter as possible. A one or two-week iteration is a good range. This approach enables to accommodate easily the improvements and evolutions of the mobile application and enables the anticipation of risks inherent in a software development project.
Quality Assurance to Mobile Application Development
When we talk about mobile application testing and quality assurance, we need to focus on some aspects related to user experience, the multiple platforms, and devices that the application will run.
Different from traditional desktop or web applications, that there are minimal hardware or connectivity concerns, mobile applications need to be validated using a wide range of devices, even if it was developed for a specific native platform. In the case of hybrid approach development, the test and quality assurance process should be more careful and deep on this aspect.
A successful mobile application testing and quality assurance must take into account the features and functionalities (respecting the requirements or user stories and the business rules previously defined), security, performance, compatibility, and usability, ensuring the best user experience with low bug rate.
Regarding the testing documentation, it is a good practice to write effective test cases, that could be reused in future development iterations, avoiding rework and waste of time for the same test steps. Test cases are very important and useful for any kind of software project and the mobile applications are not different in this aspect.
Conclusion
To create a high-quality mobile application, being it native or hybrid, we should take into account aspects related to an efficient and analytical process of gathering the software requirements and the identification of target application audience.
The dynamism of mobile applications requires quick responses to meet the best user experience, being directly related to a flexible project planning and efficient delivery management.
Certainly, the software development process more recommended for mobile application development is any of the agile methodology, such as Scrum. Follow the best practices of the process or framework you have chosen, plan your user stories to fit the user requirements, use an efficient delivery process for each iteration and do not neglect the tests and quality assurance.
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